wordpress wp-cron.php causes high server loads

wordpress wp-cron.php causes high server loads

Is your wordpress installation causing you abnormally high server loads? This is a common issue, especially amongst sites which get 5000-50,000 visits a month.

The problem is down to wordpress calling wp-cron.php every time a page is loaded. Its a highly intensive file, but it is only responsible for automating certain wordpress tasks such as plugin updates or sending emails, and doesn’t need to be called for each page request.

The solution is to add this line to your wp-config file, which stops the wp-cron being loaded each time.define(‘DISABLE_WP_CRON’, ‘true’);

If required, you can then call this file via a cron job instead, perhaps once or twice a day. This will significantly reduce the load on your server.